(WIP - if you're seeing this note, then it means I'm still adding landing pages so some links may still be placeholders)
Hi, I'm Alder and I have been playing the sims since the first game came out. Here at my blog, you'll find a mix of things as I sort of ping pong all over the place, hence a pinned table of contents
The Stories
Content Warnings
AlderSave
My 'main' project is my ForeverSave; a save I started in 1890 and am playing through a century of sim-life to build my forever world for future games. It's unwieldy enough to need its own table of contents.
AlderSave Landing Page
Side of Pease
My Legacy challenge disaster save. Based in the standard save world, currently on Gen 1, Jade Pease. Using SojuTrait's Legacy Challenge rules. Sort of. It might get its own landing page but I'm not sure we're going to survive to a Gen 2.
Jade Pease, from the beginning
WCIF and My Master Lists
I'm WCIF friendly, but I tend to use this blog to also keep track of what creators and mods I frequent, along with links to their own pages.
Custom Content Masterlists Landing Page
ReShade (Old, but still helpful info)
Alder's List Tag (Every Master list post I've made uses this tag)
Custom Content
I have only just started making custom content but all my files for everything are hosted on my patreon which is free. I just like having control over my file hosting.
Alder Eye CC Files
Tutorials
You may have noticed I like to document things. It helps my brain keep things in order. So when I'm teaching myself something, sometimes I end up writing my process up here. I am by no means an expert, but you can find all my tutorials under the tag. (This will also include reblogged tutorials, as well)
I'm working on some Paralives skin replacement but there are a lot of files to go through. I'll put together a tutorial as well when I've got it all working correctly.
In the meanwhile, though, I have my .PSDs for the textures for both the eyes and the skins. These are what I use to make my own textures off of and if you're a creator, you might find them useful.
My patreon is free. I don't currently use Early Access for any content. Right now it's just a good way to store files for people who like my stuff.
Paralives PSDs by Alder's Sims on Patreon. Join Alder's Sims's community for exclusive content and updates.
Apparently there's a limit of 50 mods (downloaded from the workshop) to be loaded at a time by Paralives. Downloaded Households and Lots count to that limit unfortunately. So if you have mods disappearing from the game and not showing up in the "Mods" list, that's probably why (it was happening to me and was driving me CRAZY).
EDIT:
Someone made a plugin where you can install plugin mods for the game, including one to REMOVE the 50 limit for workshop downloads! Here (click) is the link for the plugin!
From inside the game, on the main menu go to Mods > Plugin Hub and there you'll find the option to install the Workshop mods limit fix.
Thanks @honowo for sharing! 🫶
Below the cut is the previous workaround I had posted.
Here's a workaround:
I'd recommend doing this just to Households & Lots only. DON'T DO IT TO MODS and custom content, in case the creator updates their mods you won't receive them.
The folder for items downloaded from the Workshop for Paralives is this one:
So, I picked up paralives and while I have many thoughts (If you want to see my random commentary, I keep that to Bluesky, and this for more coherent things like stories or tutorials.
It's got some wonk but it also has some really promising bones. It is early access but I really think the modding community will make or break the game. So while I have played a bit, I've been focused on how to make mods. Starting with eyes, because that's my default starting point on teaching myself things at this point. I have my eyes in game now:
And my next step is working on default skin replacements because some of the harsh lines bother me no end that are baked into the skin.
I haven't shared the mod for my eyes yet on steam because I'm still testing it in my own game to make sure it works exactly as intended but, I did want to give a few pointers on how files are organized because I struggled with the existing documentation. More below the cut.
So I think Paralives is focusing their team on the big priorities which is good! It's by far my preference, but that means there's not a lot of things like pop up tips or detailed guides when it comes to modding.
But Paralives DOES have things built in to make your own mods wihout needing a third party program like Sims 4 Studio. For eyes, you'll need a texture editor (I use Photoshop). And something like Blender is needed for working on meshes.
File Formats and Locations
Paralives works with .png files for images and .fbx for models. Those are the formats you're going to want to save things into for use in your mods folder. (This is serious basics so I'm not getting into .ini or .config or other things that more advanced most might need.
There are two places that files are stored on the computer. On my machine, the main game files are here:
But you can look up both with Steam and Paralives respectively.
With Steam, you can right click on the game in the list of your games and from the drop down menu select Manage and then Browse Local Files. That will take you to the game files.
In Paralives, on the main menu screen, below Start New Game and Load Game, Settings, etc., there's an option for Mods, which brings you to this page.
Then clicking on the folder icon of one of your mods in the little bar(you can make a blank new one and name it with your project) will take you to the folder that Mod Files should be stored in for the mod you are making.
Finding Base Textures
Now that we know WHERE things are, we can get the textures that paralives is currently using. These will be stored in the main game files.
Anything that makes up a Para is under Equipment in how they refer to it. Clothes, Hair, Eyes, Skin, Teeth, Body Parts. It's all Equipment.
C:\...\Paralives\Main.mod\Species\Human
For humans kid to adult, this is where I found the textures I started with. You can just search through the different file folders and open up things to see what they are - that's the long route I took - but there is a short cut.
Back to Paralives, on the screen where I showed you how to find the folder for mods, start by editing your new blank mod then click on Control Panel in the top bar.
Eyes are Equipment so we'll go there.
I put in Eye to narrow down the search and it ended up being in 'EyeIrisGlobe', if you open up that, you can see all the details about that specific part. In this case, we want to look at the textures that are applied to the eye mesh. This is where we'll change the texture to a new one for the mod later on but if you go and look it up in the menu that pops up, a hover menu will tell you where that file is located.
So, it's a great way to look at what's point to what. While there's not a lot of documentation, this is SUPER helpful for figuring out what goes to what.
What's in an Eye?
A lot, it turns out. There are several different textures that make up the final look of an eye in paralives.
Since Heterochromia is a built in option, there's a mesh for each eye, what Paralives calls the 'greymask' texture and then a colormap mask for each eye.
There's also a greymask for the inner eye ring and each eye has two different colormaps, one for the simple whole eye color and one that allows you to change the whites of the eyes, the inner ring, and the entire iris.
The Greymask:
The Tri Color Mask
Eye Mask
Inner Grey Mask
This doesn't include the catchlights (the white highlights over the pupil), those are their own entry and have additional images in another folder.
For me, all I wanted to do was replace the base eye texture with a different one, same dimensions and same color locations for the different color wheel options, which meant I only needed to replace the greymask texture.
I'm not going to go over how to make a texture for an eye. There are better ones already out there, certainly. This one is just a remake of the eye texture I made for my sims default eye replacement.
Putting it into Paralives
To make the mod, I needed a right and left eye replacement in png format, and at the ratio that they use for textures (1024 x 2048). I strongly recommend using the base greymask of each to model exactly where your replacement is going to fit. Otherwise you'll end up with textures mapped to the wrong mesh as well. Background should be transparent of course.
Now back to Paralives to make it a mod. You'll need to make a New Mod, if you haven't already. Leave the files in whatever place you've saved them. For me, its a working folder on my desktop.
In the game, after you've made the mod, use the folder icon to open the folder window. Paralives automatically makes a folder for your new mod. The files for that mod need to go in THAT folder specifically.
This is the part that caused me serious issues. The game MAY NOT detect the files right away. What worked for me is to exit the game after storing the new files in the right folder and then return to the game.
You will know when the game finds the files as it will pop up a little notice like '2 files were reinstalled'. (Sorry, I didn't manage to screenshot the exact message. I was in and out a bunch of times trying to figure out why I couldn't find the files in the next steps of this. Its the only pop up you get like it. You'll know it when you see it!)
Once you have the files loaded and you've gotten the little pop up, it should go quickly.
Note: A friend who is also working on modding reported that turning the mod on and off has gotten the files to register as well. That may work for you as well! I had to exit the game to get it to show up.
So, click on the mod and then Edit This Mod.
You are now editing the Mod!
IMPORTANT: You will continue to edit this mod even if you go into game and out of game, it will remain in edit mode until you click the stop editing mod button. Which is great for testing. Not so great for not giving yourself a mild heart attack when you realize you're in edit mode and might accidentally change things because you're not paying attention.
Now, back to the control panel!
All we are going to do is replace the HumanEyeLeft.png and the HumanEyeRight.png to point to the new files you made and dropped in the mod folder.
Once that's done, you'll need to make sure that the settings (the wheel icon next to the texture name), match what they should.
The default eye settings for the base game eyes look like this:
For my eyes, that was brighter than I wanted them so I have 'Is Linear' unchecked personally.
The eye that is brighter has 'Is Linear' Checked, the eye that is darker has it Unchecked.
Great! Now you've changed the base eye texture for kid through elder! All that's left to do is repeat the step of replacing the textures and updating the settings for the 'ToddlerEyes' Equipment. That will make the baby and toddler match.
Final Pro Tips
Remember what I said about the 'now editing mod' staying on and the heart attacks?
It IS useful as well. So, if you leave the mod in edit mode, you can actually go into the game and tweak it live. When you're in, for example, Paramaker, Control+F2 will bring up the mod menu and you can make adjustments to the control panel and see them reflected as soon as you change the eye color.
My final word of advice is: BACK UP YOUR MOD FILES. If you delete the mod, it will destroy the mod folder it made for it and any files stored inside. DON'T put your only copy of a texture or a model you've made into the mod folder. Have a backup. For your own sanity down the line.
After a brief electrocution, Trigger Broke was ready to join the extended family for Indigo's big birthday party. Which meant wrangling a whole bunch of extended Broke family to all show up for it. Trigger was already there because he was the houseguest that never leaves, but they went all out to celebrate their little princess.
(Literally, Skip capped out his noble career between the arrival of his many, many children).
Trigger and Skip's mom arrived, Ruby, though she's remarried Oberon Summerdream. Before her marriage though, Skip and Dustin got a surprise little sister. (Thanks, MCCC!), who is right around the same age as Indigo. Jordan Summerdream (because Dustin learned how to deadbeat dad from his father) is going to be eventually one of Indigo's BFF's. Today, however, is a rough introduction.
Indigo doesn't care for these strangers!
Also in attendance are the Broke-Black cousins. Though mom, Brandi, may have misunderstood the dresscode.
Yikes. I don't know, maybe she just wanted to make really sure her ex-husband knew she was happily married now.
She probably should have just sent him one of the wedding photos instead.
They eloped. Which makes sense as they have been busy having twins of their own.
Talia Broke-Black, however, is the biological offspring of Dustin, Sr. and Brandi. She's here with her parents and brothers though the infant twins remained at home with the babysitter.
And for some reason we had a ghost entertainer show up who mostly broke the dollhouse for the kids. Rude. No tip for you ghost performer!
Indigo is not making the best impression with the whole biting strangers habit.
Dad was NOT impressed with her antics. At this point, Skip is very much the main-parent as Jade spends most of her time dealing with breastfeeding twins and watering dying plants.
Skip does... everything else, really. Alongside ruling the very small kingdom of Henford-on-Bagely.
Despite a few incidents, though, we gold-starred that party!
Trigger Broke failed to make an impression on his ex, Ruby, who has moved on to a fairy king. Good for her. Oberon did not show up at the party because he has zero interest in the Broke or Pease families and you know what? Fair. That's fair.
Eventually, though, it was time for cake!
Happy Birthday, Indigo!
Oof. Immediately into the pre-teen stare of disdain.
Well, apparently I didn't even bother to get pictures of the twins being born. Poor extra legacy offspring. Forever left on the cutting room floor.
I did get some of Jade's labor but this sort of chaos was probably why I didn't manage to get any cute pictures. Two toddlers and two infants is a LOT.
Indigo was no where near excited about siblings once they did arrive.
But the time with two infants and toddlers was so chaotic that the only picture I have of one of the twins in infancy is him playing with his dad. Whoops. Meet Skye Pease.
And his twin sister, Ocean. Who also has like one photo of her as an infant, about to blow out candles on a cake. Oops. They're in more photos once they're toddlers.
But before that, it's time for a Very Pease Birthday Party where absolutely nothing goes wrong!
Trigger Broke continues in the trend of being a terrible house guest. Honestly, I think Indigo should bite him more often.
If there is a trash pile, Trigger wants nothing more than to go and stomp around in it and make a mess. He got hit by lightning once because he could not resist the lure of trash piles out by the chicken coop.
But house guest or not, it was time for Azure to experience the random choices of the age-up CAS closet choices. Good luck, Azure!
Yeah, he needed a quick glow up. But after some tweaks, we have another adorable toddler.
And even better, Indigo adores her little brother so he remains safe from becoming a target of her tiny teeth.
Aw. Best friends! Ignore that Indigo's eyebrows once again reset to the non custom colors once more. Stupid EA bugs.
Okay, two toddlers isn't so bad. Thankfully Indigo potty trained quickly so we're only dealing with one potty training disaster at a time at the moment.
And Az made friends with the guy who keeps visiting the farm to take the chickens away to a retirement farm up state! A fact that deeply unsettled Skip, as he's the only real adult on the farm, let's be real.
Jade's too worried that Grim might steal her man to be worried about his other friendships.
Skip, though, is just freaked out about Grim being in his house. Because he's the keeper of the Pease braincell at the moment.
It's okay, though. Jade has a plan. Clearly if Skip has time for conversations with other sims, it's time to expand their family. Indigo is a little dubious about another sibling but Az is tenatively excited. Before the family expands, though, it's time to get some family photos with the heir and spare, before the extras arrive.
And we are officially into snapshot montages of Too Many Babies (tm). With a toddler and an infant, Jade and Skip are more or less keeping their heads above water.
While being devoted parents, the ranch part of the legacy was definitely suffering a bit.
Grim was an uncomfortably regular visitor to casa Pease. To the point where he started letting himself in to chat with Skip and Azure. Which made everyone but Azure kind of tense. Understandably!
Just make yourself at home, I guess, Grim.
But Jade and Skip managed to sneak away long enough for their favorite activity; how fast can we fill all the household slots. It's easier to get some private time when you're letting the playmat do most of the heavy lifting on getting the baby to his infant milestones.
And letting the toddler just wander the farm without supervision. Jade and Skip are really leaning into the whole free-range parenting most of the time.
As much as Indigo likes the plants now, that will not last into the years where she has to do chores.
The milestones that Az doesn't get from the playmat mostly come from Indigo. I was really worried with her reaction to the birth and the whole biting habit but she ended up placing the blame squarely on Jade's shoulders to the point where she developed some seriously angry impressions about not having enough attention. Which is... valid, really.
Jade does love being a mom, though, and has managed to get herself pregnant with twins after I retconned the alien pregnancy. Which... I have some regrets there because alien pregnancy as birth control had some real possibilities.
At least we have Colt Connelly's modern doppelganger to play the role of Doctor McDreamy.
And L.Faba teaching the lamaze class in her workout clothes, apparently? The Grey's Anatomy of this simworld is super weird. But you know what hasn't happened in a hot minute? Some of Skip's terrible male relatives showing up with a suitcase and a sob story.
Pictures taken moments before disaster. Trigger Broke is a stranger to Indigo and we know what sort of welcome strangers get in the Pease household.
It's childhood semi-montage time! Jade's watcher has been deep in the trenches of infant hell but there are some cute pictures to share. When last we left the disaster family, it was just Jade, Skip and little Indigo.
Though since Skip and Jade can't keep their hands off each other, regardless of who may be watching, that was about to change.
The farm went completely to shit at this point, the third cow died and the Watcher decided we were going to pause livestock after the chickens all died out because Grim was a constant visitor.
To the point that Jade got jealous over him and Skip developed an obnoxious fear of death to replace his angst over his bastard status, which resolved when I gave him a mom.
There was also a brief visit from a would be thief to steal... honestly, it would probably have been the fridge. Most of the Pease estate is not very valuable.
Fortunately, that whacking at the sword training dummy came in pretty handy actually. Honestly, Skip really started to show himself as the MVP here while Jade was pregnant with the second member of Gen 2 as she mostly slept, ate, and occasionally tried to keep the plants and remaining chickens alive.
You never know who will show up at basement-court. Looks like Dustin's life is still a dumpster-fire though. You love to see it.
Time for a trash-nap!
Brandi showed up to briefly allow Dustin to see the daughter he abandoned and then promptly went into labor herself with the twins she'd conceived with Crispin Black.
Which was apparently contagious because Jade also went into labor despite it being Indigo's birthday.
Rude, Jade. This totally isn't going to give Indigo a complex later on in life.
So the party I planned for first birthday will have to wait. But Indigo still got a cake and hit her terrible twos, gaining the aggressive trait! Fun!
She's a cutie! Even if she did promptly bite the first stranger to walk into the house; the mid wife who showed up to deliver the new baby.
After Indigo's harrowing birth, Jade was determined to have the home water-birth that she was promised.
Surrounded by nature and the smell of chicken shit and dying plants, the Pease family welcomed a baby boy to be the official Gen 2 Spare.
A boy they promptly punished by leaning hard into the color naming conventions of the legacy and named him Azure.
Azure Pease. It sounds like a WTD
At least he's a cutie!
And he even survived meeting his older sister for the first time, without any teeth-marks to show for it.
So an eventful day; a birthday, a birth, some off screen births of cousins. But at least everyone was settling in for a quiet evening.
For once, his father's slurred words didn't set his knees to shaking. Abel felt his lip curl in a sneer of his own.
"I said, no. No, I ain't paying your bail an' I ain't hustling. You can dry out in here for a bit." The words felt good, delivered with cold precision.
Everyone had a breaking point and Abel had reached his somewhere between the cooling body of the only parent worthy of the name and the sobs of his siblings.
Abel remained steady on his feet as his father flung himself against the bars, using them to balance against a world that was clearly swimming and shifting as he listed somewhere between 'still drunk' and 'viciously hungover'.
"When I get outta here, you little sack o' shit-"
"Ma had the baby," Abel cut in, the words harsh and flat. "A girl. Ma named her Fancy."
His father opened his mouth again but Abel continued, relentless. "The baby made it. Ma didn't."
Each sentence was short, bitten out as if each phrase hurt more than the last. He made no effort to gentle the news. Zachariah might have loved Margaret but he'd been a mediocre husband on his best day, and those were few and far between.
"Wha.. you lyin'-"
"I ain't," Abel said, fingers curling around the cold metal bar of the cell, grounding himself with the way it bit into his palm. "You can talk to the preacher 'bout it. I asked him to stop by later. Figured you'd need someone to listen to you an' I got too much to do."
"No... NO!" Zachariah flung himself at the bars, reaching for his son as if he could just rip that truth from Abel's flesh until it was bleeding on the ground.
"No, not my Margaret! MARGARET!"
Abel turned to leave, "Baby's healthy," he said, though he wasn't sure if his father actually heard any of it over his own shattered wailing. "Boys are... well, they ain't alright but they will be."
When he caught his father's muffled curses, words making it clear that he'd happily consign the rest of his family to perdition in exchange for his dead wife, Abel's sigh hissed through his teeth.
He hadn't expected this to go any different but it did confirm that he made the right choice. Abel didn't trust his father's grief not to turn to booze fueled fury on a dime and he had four younger siblings now to keep from Zachariah's fists.
As he turned away, the inhuman howl of grief that Zachariah released made even Abel's stomach lurch. But theirs wasn't the sort of relationship that led itself towards comfort and support, a fact that Abel had to remind himself as his foot stuttered on the floorboards.
And only when the screaming faded to broken sobs did Abel manage to make himself walk away.
Ugh, a sad one, I know. It'll be a bit of a pause here as I have some things and props and new sims to prep as Wyatt moves away and things continue on here in Chestnut Ridge. I have some montage-y posts of antics in Side Pease that'll probably go up over the next day or two.
I'm really proud of these shots. My first pose sequence that I made for a story! Because I needed poses that interacted with the bars. Hope you enjoyed <3
I have become pose-obsessed. I spent half of this week making a series of poses for my spare in my shitpost legacy (not even my 1890s save!). But I put them together into actual packs with thumbnails if anyone else wants to use them.
Link on my patreon, free as always: Here.
Otherwise, enjoy picture spam since this will probably be condensed down into a single photo or two for a growing up montage in Side Pease at some point.
The summer of 1890 did not fade gracefully into the cooler fall. No, it fought every step of the way. Even though they should have been treated to wind coming down the ridge carrying a bite of winter chill, it was blisteringly hot.
Abel could respect that, in a way. He knew what it was like to fight every step of the way against the inevitable.
Even as his head still spun with the news of Wyatt's upcoming departure from their small town to bigger (and brighter, his mind whispered pointedly) pastures, Abel's own responsibilities weighed him down with heavy chains.
And the heaviest of those was the one anchoring him to the man that Abel reluctantly called 'Pa'.
Zachariah Abbott was many things; a drunk, a cheat, a thief, a piss poor father and certainly a mediocre provider for his large family. His only redeeming quality was the fact that he adored his wife.
Margaret Abbott had been the heart of their family and it was yet another burden on Abel's shoulders to tell the man that his wife had not survived bringing the youngest Abbott into the world.
Zachariah's head spun from both the remnants of booze in his system as well as the beating he'd taken on his way to the lockup.
This wasn't the first time that he'd drank too much and gotten dreams of 'one big score' to turn things around for their family. Unfortunately, Zachariah was no better a thief that he was a father.
There was no appreciation in his expression as his son's shadow fell on the cell where he was nursing his hangover. Only rage looking for a target
Zac: Boy! Took you long enough. You got the money on you? You better.
Abel took in his father, sorrow mingling with disgust. The few coins he'd scraped together from odd jobs felt heavy in his pocket and the anger knotted in his chest, a cold, heavy sort of anger in counter point to his father's blistering rage.
The silence stretched as a weight shifted, a subtle balance of power as Abel realized he had no more fear of his father's heavy hand.
But I finally got mine working! So I'm jotting it down here as I figured this out via three different tutorials and a BUNCH of trial and error.
You will need Photoshop with a DDS plugin from Nvidia and Sims 4 Studio along with a basic understanding of how those programs work.
I'm not really going to go over how to make a good eye base but I do have the one I used to make my default replacements for the base game eyes along with all of my eyes on Patreon (free, as always).
You can find those here: Patreon (Free)
Now, longwinded tutorial about eyes and emission maps below the cut:
So, a few weeks ago, I started on a quest to make a full set of default replacements for my own game which was going along fairly quickly until I got to the vampire and fairy eyes at which point I hit a big road block; I could get the emission map changed for the first eye, sometimes but the rest of the swatches would pull the EA shine instead of the replacement and it took me two weeks to figure out where I was going wrong.
The short version:
Each Eye Swatch MUST be its own package. <- This is the step I was missing. You CAN merge them into a single package after they're done to reduce size but they have to each be a single package overr-riding one default eye.
Emission maps have to be the same size as eye maps; 1024 x 2048
When you are saving the emission maps to DDS, it has to be using the 8.8.8.8 encoding not the typical B3 that is used for hair, for example.
Now let me go through it step by step and explain what's going on under the hood. If you don't need that, at the end of this, I'll go through what different errors look like in the game to help troubleshoot your own emissions map.
Step By Step
To understand the basics, to get the eyeshine the game puts the eye diffuse map on the mesh and layers over that the emissions map above it so you see the diffuse map under the shine. You have to change BOTH the emissions AND the diffuse map when you are working on a default replacement eye otherwise you will only see the new texture under the EA emissions for that eye.
Let's take the Vampire Cat Eye for example:
We start by selecting the CAS Override option, then select ONLY the cat eye swatch:
For any NON EMiSSION map eye, you normally would select the whole set of swatches (shift-click)
This is what I did for all my eyes and this is the part that screwed me up for days. Don't do this. Make each eye with its own emissions into its own package and then merge them into a single file after when you're done with all of the changes.
If you do it the other way, the emissions map will change only on the first eye in the swatch pattern and the rest will be whatever the default is for that eye swatch in EA's code.
JUST ONE SWATCH PER PACKAGE FOR EMISSION FILES.
Great, now we have the file to drop in our new textures into. Or, if you haven't made textures yet, you can export both the diffuse and the emissions mask from here to work on in photoshop.
(Sidenote: If you are like me and want to get rid of the weird sort of insectoid eye thing going on with one of the fairy eye swatches, that's the one eye that has a bumpmap in normals. If you clear that out, you won't have weird hexagon shape shadows on your new eye. Just select 'make blank' for your default override).
And here's what the textures for the cat eye look like in photoshop. Diffuse on the left and emissions on the right.
EA drops the catchlight from their diffuse maps which is a good plan. (Catchlight is that little white dot on the eye that tricks you into reading the eye as shiny). If you just copy the diffuse texture over, the white of the catchlight is going to glow bright white on the eye like its a glowing spot of the eye.
As an example, here are the textures I replaced on my default eyes for this swatch.
Catchlight removed and, in my case, I wanted the glow to be less intense so I dropped the opacity of the colored layer to 50 percent after I copied it to the emissions file.
There are certainly better tutorials about how the emissions map works out there so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel but I will touch on the basics.
In Photoshop, the same area that you manipulate layers also has a 'channel' section:
You CAN adjust the channel section if you switch over to 'Alpha 1' like you would changing a layer and then hide the RGB levels. If you do this, you will see things turn red to warn you that you are affecting the ALPHA transparency and not actually the image.
If I select the alpha channel and go back to layers, it now looks like this to let me know I'm adjusting things I might not mean to. If your layer bar has turned red, it means that you're working on the alpha layer and affecting it.
Most people use emissions maps to just make a solid glow. If that's the case, you just want it to be solid black in the alpha channel and you're good to go.
Think of this channel with emissions maps like a greyscale channel, the lighter the grey in that spot, the faster the emissions will blink on and off. A pure white will flicker so fast that it almost looks like a constant glow.
If I change the circle behind the eye to be grey instead of black, it will have the shine blink on and off.
Once you have the emissions map done, you'll want to save it as a .DDS.
For eyes, it should be encoded in the format 8.8.8.8 BGRA.
I'm not sure if that's true for non-eye emission maps but I suspect that's the encoding for any emissions maps post the color sliders patch in the Sims. I haven't personally tested emission maps on anything but eyes myself.
Both eyes and eye emissions need this encoding instead of the B3 that's used for things like hair.
Once you have that done, you should be able to import your diffuse map and your emissions map to the package and test it to see if it works.
My final result below:
Troubleshooting
I am positive there are cases where emissions maps break that I didn't cover so let me add how I figured out my problems based on the things going on in the sims when I loaded emission maps in.
If the first eye is having the emissions show up correctly but none of the other eyes in that occult are, try doing each as a separate package and test each eye that way first. Its a pain in the ass and time consuming but it'll help you figure out if one of your emissions maps is the problem or if its because of the eyes being merged.
Selecting the eye and the entire sim vanishes; this is usually one of two things. Either the diffuse or emissions (or both) are the wrong size texture OR you uploaded the emissions map in a format other than the one it wants. (SFS won't warn you that the format is wrong on emissions maps like it does for other ones. What can be helpful, though is looking at the empty white box that represents the emissions map. It should look like this:
But if you've encoded something in, say, B7 instead, it'll look like this:
Square bad. Square means that your sim will vanish when they try on these eyes. I learned this the hard way when I was trying to figure out what format emissions had to be in.
There's one other error that I cannot figure out and its happening with one swatch of the toddler eyes that I think might be EA's fault not mine. BUT if you're working on the toddler, child, infant eyeshine, and the eyeballs look weird as hell and there's a second set floating above their head where adult eyes would be, it means that the emissions map is calling the adult emissions mesh instead of the child emissions map and I have no clue how to fix it. In my game, its happening on the purple eye toddler swatch so I'd just avoid using that one for cloning if you encounter it as well.
If you know how to fix that last one, hit me up and tell me please. I've done fresh default replacement packages, changing on the textures the same way I've done every other eye and gotten the same error each time three times now for just those eyes specifically. And I'm not inclined to fight with it any further at the moment after two weeks of this.
While I wait for EA to fix the latest catastrofuck of an update, I am reverting to my usual habits of playing a save I don't care about breaking on the off chance I accidentally update.
There is a nifty new challenge making the rounds. I am notoriously bad at challenges but I enjoy using them as a rough guideline.
You can find the Cults and Communes Challenge rules here, and one of the creators has their own first episode of gameplay on her youtube channel.
For my version of the challenge, I am going with the Cult game play and I've made Prophet Crabtree.
A mediocre writer and failed wellness guru, he's opening the 'Crabtree Wellness Retreat' in Ravenwood (known for its many cemeteries), with plans to treat aspiring young stars and starlets for big bucks and eventual world domination. I've gone with 'Arrogant', 'Shady' and 'Street-Smart' for his starting traits and an aspiration to become fabulously wealthy.
I need to poke around and see if there's a good mod for tithing as one of the things I want to do is have him brain wash his stars and starlettes and then send them out to earn and send money back to the cult. So he can have an inner circle and then whales that he has under his thumb.
I have built a small little camping area for the prospects and their prophet.
And a pond and hot springs - though I have to recolor the iceburgs to grey stone for rock formations before I get much more into taking pictures <.<
Its a 64x64 plot so I just have two little builds on it to start but that's more than I really am supposed to have by the rules. I just wanted good backdrops for pictures :D
You're NOT going to support the Sims 4 Marketplace with money, reblogs, etc.
You're NOT going to harass or bully creators who go on the Marketplace. Ignore them. Make them irrelevant. Don't feed the trolls, DON'T engage with and be shitty to people.
You WILL support FREE (and/or reasonable early access) creators. That means REBLOGS and advertising people's stuff in builds on social media (within reason). Not likes. Reblogs.
You'll spread the word about free alternative content-- let's be real, it's out there somewhere. The Sims 4 has SO MUCH custom content out there. I easily have content from over a T H O U S A N D creators on my HD. There is NO SHORTAGE of a million variants of the same type of item and thanks to all the available tools out there, making custom content is easier than ever.
You'll share 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️ on the high seas, if we can figure out how to do it.
You're not going to support billionaires' continuous human rights violations, environmental disasters, and global networks that literally want to take EVERYTHING from us, INCLUDING our creativity and our willingness to think for ourselves.
REASONS TO AVOID THE MARKETPLACE + ITS PARTICIPATING CREATORS + ITS CONTENT LIKE THE PLAGUE:
The Saudi investment group and TRUMP FAMILY buyout. 'Nuff said, but we'll continue.
The interest on EA's loan to do this buyout is going to be ~$1 BILLION annually. Them doing this means they are DESPERATE. We should NOT be rewarding them just because we want that fancy lipstick that, let's be honest, exists for free if you'd take like five minutes to go look on Google image or Pinterest.
EA is laying off workers to replace them with generative AI. They're closing other game studios. They would literally sell creators to Satan for a billion cornchips and they'd watch you roast in hellfire for a "cheap" laugh.
They haven't (as of this post) given an actual price-scaling metric - and in fact, have outright said it is subject to CHANGE. That means the pricing will NOT remain the same, EA has direct control over it, and the "value" of content is variable.
It's literally just gambling. Like holy fuck, this is so fucking predatory. And for those who don't know, the saying about gambling is, the house always wins. Casinos always rig shit to their favor to "run their business." Microtransactions work the same. Damn. Way.
Maxis literally wants the Marketplace to fail. They're hoping it dies and they're RIGHT to want that.
To be honest? I want to have sympathy for the folks who need $$$. But I can't, not at this point. There are multiple avenues of earning money through Patreon, Boosty, Substack, Modco, TSR (to a lesser extent), SimsFinds (formerly SimsDom), & even Curseforge - and yes, Curseforge does come with the caveat that they're part of an umbrella that helps support the IDF. Pretty sure I've even missed one or two other monetizing sites dedicated entirely to Sims content.
Creators who are joining up with the Sims 4 Marketplace are actively pouring little bits of gasoline on a forest fire in the middle of a dry summer with the reasoning that it'll help them be more warm at night.
Love that for you, but you are actively feeding something that is already wildly out of control and consuming the community.
Spread the word. Take this post outside tumblr without credit for all I care. But I know this community, and I know this is going to become a problem if we let it.
